


I Remember Me

by mortalitasi



Series: dog days [3]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Action, Angst, F/M, Gen, Romance, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-25
Updated: 2014-08-25
Packaged: 2018-02-14 15:05:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2196369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortalitasi/pseuds/mortalitasi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The end of Amirah Shepard, and the beginning of something else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Remember Me

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this at like 5 AM in the morning five months ago to the Gladiator OST while crying my fucking eyes out. best friends' characters make your heart hurt. DON'T EVER DO IT (except do it, it's amazing).

Space is always silent.

She knows, logically, that the explosions she can see in the distance, in the orbit of Earth, orange and red and pink and purple – they have sound. Somewhere down there people are listening to the world disintegrate above their heads, can hear the shriek of tearing metal and the groan of collapsing ships.

Up here, nothing sounds like anything at all. They almost look like fireworks. Jasmine loved fireworks. I’m studying, she’d say, but Jasmine would pull her to the windowsill to watch the anniversary fireworks burst yellow and green and blue in the sky, like flowers being blown to nothing but petals in the summer wind.

“Is this what you choose?” the thing that is not a little boy asks, its voice a thousand tones and notes at once. It’s almost painful to hear it speak. Pain. She doesn’t remember what that’s like. There’s only the void, wide and devouring, taking everything she’s ever been and ever will be. But she can change it. Here, and now, that can change. For once, she’ll be able… it’ll be done. She’s always been the one finishing things, so it makes sense that she’ll have to finish this too. She hates goodbyes. Liara knows. Kai knew.

“ _My God, Shepard. For once in your life, listen to what I’m saying!”_

Anderson. I am, she thinks, as the glowing silhouette of the Catalyst blurs and starts to dissolve before her.  _I’m going to make this right_.

“It is.”

It doesn’t hurt when she rests her hands against the controls. In fact, it almost feels good, like a wave of warmth washing up from her feet is blanketing her in heat. She doesn’t mind it. She’s been so cold that she welcomes the burn. And then she realizes she can’t feel her fingers. The sensation, the emptiness, it bleeds forward until it’s crawling up her arms and touching at her jaw, and spirals of blue light are rising from her shoulders like ghostly smoke. Beautiful. How long has it been since she called anything that?

She watches the arcs of glittering matter whirl away from her on an unfelt breeze, feels the tie in her hair shrivel away into nothingness as long trails of it fall around her face with a sigh. She closes her eyes, expecting to see the white sear of the Crucible there, but instead something else more familiar takes shape.

First the strange, curving trees and the knobby trunks, and then the low rise of the houses against the blue sky – the lonely meandering pathway through the whispering long-grass and the well-known beaten outline of a dirt courtyard where the kids used to play with a ball that couldn’t bounce; then the pointed roof of the colony’s one-story school standing clear over the rest, its painted blue doors flung open. The wind rushes through the fields beyond, and whorls of wheat and dust and chalk rise into the air, sunlight and motes mingling, gold and ivory all at once.

It smells like home.

“ _Ami, come on, the store closes at six and I’m hungry.”_

Just a moment.

“ _Would anyone_ else _like to pair off with Private Shepard?_ ”

Almost there.

“ _I – fuck._ _Don’t tell them._ _I don’t have anywhere else to go. I’ll make it worth your while.”_

She can see them, standing there shoulder-to-shoulder above the swaying sea of stalks and wildflowers, waiting for no one but her.

So Amirah Shepard breathes deep, smiling, one last time, and lets go.


End file.
